How to Atone in 5 Easy Steps
by threesummerdays
Summary: Ruth tries to atone for her sins.  Very angsty, not humorous at all.  Spoiler warning: starts around 8.1, moves through 9.7.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This is not a funny fic, just as another warning. This is a Ruth character development fic, and a short, sad one at that. It popped into my head this morning and I just had to post it, despite my insecurities about it.

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**How to Atone in 5 Easy Step**s

Step 1: Lose Sleep

After that day, she sees their faces everywhere. On the street corner. In the store. On the bus. When she's awake. But most especially when she's asleep. It's as though those faces are engraved in her eyelids. But it's not just George and Nico. It's Harry, too. They're all there in her dreams, watching her, waiting for her to choose between her hearts.

The one heart, the one she made with George and Nico, is where she can admit that she loved them more than anything. George made her smile, loved her, reminded her of what it meant to be a woman. Nico completed her, gave her the child she'd never had, made her the mother she always wanted to be.

And now George was dead and Nico was taken from her.

She doesn't sleep for what seems like months, but she knows it's only days, maybe weeks at the most. When Jo tells her Harry missed her, she remembers her other heart.

The one she had so long ago. The one Harry completed. The one she'd been unable to deny even surrounded by the love George offered.

She doesn't sleep. She stares at the ceiling of the safe house they've kept her in "until everything's sorted" and waits for sleep to come, though it never does.

It's only when she can't take it anymore, when the hearts in her chest are weak with the effort of fighting her, that she finds the strength to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Step 2: Return to Work

She steps on the Grid and she's shocked at how different it is. She cracks a joke at Harry and he almost smiles. She counts that as a little victory.

He gives her a life back. She knows it's not her life anymore, but she tries to be grateful. Then the fun begins.

She gets along with Tariq instantly, and she settles back into her job so easily, it's almost terrifying.

She analyzes.

She finds.

She provides.

And then, just when she thinks she can do this again, she walks into his office and he stares at her. He doesn't even speak.

He doesn't have to.

She knows, just from the sadness that now lines his face, that Jo, the reasonable reason she returned, is gone. Gone, she thinks. _Dead_. Just like George. When he finally speaks, confirms what the silence has implied, the cold grips her heart and she leaves his office. She leans against the wall and cries.

She's home.


	3. Chapter 3

Step 1: Lose Sleep

It's worse than losing George and Nico, because now she's just adding names to a growing list. No longer are they her family – they are victims of her thankless, horrific job.

And Jo just joined the list.

Too many to count now, and it seems like each face haunts her more than the last until Jo's comes up, gasping as the bullet bites into her skin, drains her blood, takes her away.

She thought she was ready for this, but she's not. She knows that now. But she can't turn away from it because Harry, strong Harry, brave Harry, has said he needs her.

So she'll stay, and she'll save him.

But she doesn't sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Step 3: Deny Yourself

When he asks if Jo was the only reason she returned, she says she doesn't understand him, but they both know she does. She wants so desperately to say she came back for him.

For his smile.

For his frown.

For his tears.

She's back for all of him.

But that would mean that she could be happy, that she could live with herself. So she denies everything she wants. If George is dead, the least she can do is deny herself what she most desires, what she's always desired.

So she satisfies herself with being near him – a touch here, a word there. When she asks him to get a drink, she's somehow grateful that terrorists get in the way. She doesn't know how to act anymore. Is it appropriate for her to still love him after he's the reason she's lost everything? Can she forgive him? More importantly, can she forgive herself?

When he proposes after they lose Ros and she loses more sleep, she wants so desperately to say yes. It burns in her throat, but she pushes it back down.

It's timing, she says. It's all about timing.

But she knows it's a lie.

She's realized, after losing a woman she never thought was a friend, that every life lost because of their job pushes her further away from him. She can't imagine marrying the man she's loved for so long only to watch him disappear a little each day.

So she says no.

But her heart says yes.

Always.


	5. Chapter 5

Step 4: Remind Yourself of What You've Done at Inopportune Moments

The envelope and his explanation don't make this easier. If anything, it's harder because it had to come from him. And the fact that he'd seen the letter. And the picture. He still has full access to her life, and she has none to his.

And he wonders why she won't trust him anymore.

She slips the picture into her pocket and touches it throughout the day. It's a reminder of what she had once, what she still desires, what she's fighting for.

It's a reminder of her real life, the one where she got to be Ruth the lover, mother, shopper, gardener, swimmer, employee.

Not Ruth the Analyst for a Top Secret Branch of Government.

Sometimes she wishes she could have that life back. But then she realizes she would lose Harry, and she can't decide whether she could make that choice.

So when she's knocked out by the man who grips her like she's a rag doll, she's still trying to figure out what her decision would be.

And the answer she finds as the world goes fuzzy scares her.


	6. Chapter 6

Step 5: Avenge

When Deery gets a hold of the gun, she screams at him to shoot Rigaut. The memories are flooding back, she's pumping pure adrenaline – her moral compass is gone.

_A gun, rising in his hand. She's screaming, she's told them what she knows. The sound of the bullet._

_George, dropping to his knees._

_Dead._

_Shoot him_.

He's already a dead man when she rips the gun from Deery's hands and shoots Rigaut.

Shoots him.

Shoots him four times.

_For George._

_For Nico._

_For Jo._

_For Ros._

She saves nothing for herself.


	7. Chapter 7

Step 1: Lose Sleep

Deery weeps and pulls away from her touch as though she's on fire. She knows what he's thinking, mainly because it's only been a year since she thought the same thing.

_You heartless bastard._

She wonders now if this is how Harry felt when she pulled away from him. When he tried to look relieved because they had survived and all she could do was wail. When he tried to get her life back.

_I'm trying_.

She can tell Deery is doing exactly what she did for so long – wondering why in God's name he was spared, why he was put in the situation he was. Why she did the things she did.

And she understands now exactly how Harry felt. It's like she's inhuman, like she's not really alive. But it's her job. So she tells him to get some sleep.

When she makes it back to her own bed, with Harry asleep in the chair next to it, she stares at it for too long.

She crawls into it and closes her eyes.

She doesn't sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Step 2: Return to Work

He tries to speak to her before she leaves the hospital. And she tells him the truth.

She's ready to go back to work.

She's exorcised the demons of her past. Rigaut's dead. Mani's dead. George is dead.

Dead.

She wants to tell him that she has always forgiven him for George and Nico. She didn't know it at the time, but she has.

It's her who hasn't been forgiven.

So when she leaves the hospital, she says she's fine.

They get back to the Grid. No one mentions that Harry hasn't even changed. No one speaks to her of what happened.

So she moves to her desk and sits down.

She _is_ home.


	9. Chapter 9

Step 6: Atonement

atonement: _noun_, reparation for a wrong or injury; reparation or expiation for sin

It doesn't get easier.

She didn't expect it to, so she's not disappointed.

She's avenged George.

_Four bullets_.

She goes back to work like nothing's happened, and she pretends she's okay. Beth doesn't ask questions at the flat, and she doesn't provide answers.

_Shoot him_.

She doesn't sleep well after that, but she sleeps.

She doesn't take time off, despite the protests from Harry and the psych department.

She doesn't tell Harry she loves him, but she does.

Her life hasn't changed.

She is home.

Fin.

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**A/N: **I am _so so so_ sorry about the angst level of this. It just sort of happened. I promise that next time will be happier.


End file.
